The Consequences of Free Speech Online

It has been an interesting few weeks of reading for this class. I have become very interested in the topics, but I continue to be terrible at the blogging part of the class so I apologize for tying in ideas from the last couple of weeks.

It would be impossible to write a post right now and not talk about both the election and the Jays. I think both tie in to this class so well right now. I will start by looking at the Jays. Our class readings guided us in to a world where we looked at the increasingly popular trend of using our internet spread voices to shame others for their actions. It is something that has been done to celebrities for years, but it has now spread to average citizens (and even professional athletes) that say/do something that onliners find offensive. Take, for instance, Bautista’s bat throw.

It would seem that our society has become a little too righteous sitting behind their keyboards criticizing the actions of others (and don’t think that I have missed the irony that I am sitting behind my computer criticizing them)!! Jose Bautista is a professional athlete that kept his team (and his nation’s) playoff hopes alive with that hit. These ball players dedicate their lives to the game, and he made an incredible play. Why, then, is he being criticized? Context- or lack of it to be more specific. When you look at the bat throw on its own, in a 12 s clip, you miss the influence of the other factors surrounding the incident- including how emotionally charged the inning prior to this play was. Along with often lacking the context of what we are criticizing we are also lacking empathy for our fellow humans and seem to be upholding them to unrealistically high expectations- not accepting any form of slip-up without pointing it out.

Another example from the Jays is the Royals fan and where exactly his glove was when he caught the ball. If you don’t follow sports and haven’t heard about it- a quick Google search will provide you plenty of information (and opinions) on it. The internet world provided plenty of shaming before the game was even over. What it did make me question more, however, was how the shaming of this young man would compare to the young women with taking selfies at the ball game. I have seen plenty of comments about his facial hair, but no rape threats yet. There is no arguing that shaming is gendered in its response.

This particular meme about the Royals fan catch was posted before the game was even done. I have also seen a lot memes lately that highlight what an advantage it is to have come from a generation that did our stupid youth stuff before there were cell phones to keep evidence of it all. I think that we need to remember this when we are online witnesses to our youth’s indiscretions.

I also want to take this opportunity to discuss the idea of permanence combined with empathy. How long can we hold youth accountable for decisions they make when they are young? The internet will remember for ever- the change needs to be in what we, as consumers of the information, do with it.  Take, for instance, the Liberal MP canidate, Ala Buzreba, that stepped down due to a deleted tweet that found its way into the media during her campaign. We all made mistakes in our youth- what will having these mistakes happening in public spaces online mean for the futures of our youth?

I spent a lot of time looking at and reading about the idea of “Digital Natives”. I feel like the term itself was widely disliked, but I actually found the terms Digital Native/Immigrant to be more appropriate for me than Digital Visitor/Resident. One of the things I found funniest about the cutoff date to be considered a digital native is that it was 1980. Being born in 1985 I certainly do not feel like a digital native. I think it is important to keep in mind that whichever of these terms you prefer (digital native/immigrant or digital visitor/resident) that they aren’t 2 separate categories to which a person either belongs or doesn’t belong. They are a spectrum (like so many, many other things we encounter in the education world) and every individual can have multiple places on the spectrum.

Major Project Update: I have decided that I am going to interview students to see when and how they use social media on a day to day basis. I am also interested in how they think their social media usage has changed their relationships with their family and friends. I hope to get the questions made up in the next week and start talking to students that might be willing to participate. I also need to figure out how to get parent permission and media release forms needed to be able to share it with all of you.

 

TTFN. Thanks for being patient while I catch up on my blogging.

Brittany

I am enough

Hey Team,

Sorry it has taken me so long to get my thoughts posted on here. I am behind in my blogging, but I have been reading, watching videos, and researching the class ideas a lot so I have a lot to say- you will hear from me several times over the next week as I catch up. Stick with me as I take you on a step back to the first readings and reflect on my journey.

I started the introductory readings by looking at Federman’s article, What is the Meaning of the Media is the Message? I can honestly say that this has taken a long time for me to start to understand McLuhan’s idea- and I am still working on fully understanding the idea. Hopefully by the end of this class I can get it. I understand how the medium that we use to communicate is important- perhaps as important as the message- but I can’t seem to get my mind around how the medium IS the message as I still revert back to my understanding that they are 2 important things, but distinctly different things. I also understand that the idea is deliberately paradoxical- but this is one paradox that is just not clicking in my mind. McLuhan is quoted as saying that “The effect of the program is incidental”, but I just can’t seem to get my mind around the fact that the message is incidental. I also wonder how messages that are spread through a variety of media fit in to the picture.  Stay posted for my update on my understanding of this paradox.

This weeks TED Talk by Sherry Turkle, Connected, but Alone, was far more interesting to me and made a lot more sense for me.

There were so many moments throughout her talk where I found myself pausing her video to write down what she had said. She talked about how the uses of new social medias are changing our relationships- not only with each other, but with ourselves. I was interested by her acknowledgement that conversations in real time are more difficult because they don’t allow us time to present the version of ourselves we want to be a pretty powerful idea. As a mature, experienced user of Facebook I constantly notice this about my FB friends- how they are trying to create an image of who they are. Before hearing Turkle talk about it in the way she did I never really thought about how our teenagers now are so used to being able to edit their image before it goes out to the world that they may end up uncomfortable with the unedited version of themselves. Her statement “If we don’t teach our children how to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely” reminded me of the teenage girls we have billeted over the last few years. They are constantly connected with their friends and constantly looking for peer approval of EVERYTHING. I overheard a conversation one day after one of the girls had posted a picture about the number of likes she needed to get in an hour to decide if she would leave it posted. I joked with the girls and challenged them on their thinking- but that idea of that posted picture stuck with me- just how validated teenage girls feel by responses to their online presence.

This constant connection is changing how our youth, especially girls, think about themselves and what they value about themselves. I think there is also a sense of anxiety associated with a lack of response- especially from certain people when we know they have seen our social media ‘extensions of our selves’. Even I have found myself questioning situations if I see that someone has read a text and not responded- and I am a self-confident adult, not a teenager, whose sense of self tends to be far less secure. I think that this idea ties right in with the Media Literacy chapters we read (written by potter).  Potter discusses the constant flood of media that we face on a daily basis and how the mass media conditions our thought processes. As the mother of 2 young girls this idea scares me. I want them to feel like they are enough in a society where our views of what are woman should be are so edited.

I chose my blog title based on this idea that our constant interaction with mass media has such a huge impact on us, even when we don’t even realize we are ‘consuming’ the media. I think Potter makes a great point about the need to recognize media messages and control what effect they have on us, not to let the mass media control our thought processes for us.

I hope you are all a little more critical of the media you encounter today 🙂

“I’m not very techy” -Why this excuse just isn’t good enough

“I’m not very techy”. I used this excuse last year as I started in EC&I 831 and now I find it similar to “I’m not good at Math”- it’s baloney. It was a convenient excuse for not partaking in the online world and using many of the resources available to me. Completing that course and thinking a lot about what I learned in the months that followed gave me a new perspective on this excuse. I don’t accept it anymore- not from myself nor from others.

I also heard this excuse in my Grade 10 classroom from students as they learn to navigate Google Classroom and their new Chromebooks. They are the technology generation, they can’t just check out and claim that they aren’t good at technology. My students and I have something in common- enough skill to figure out the online world when we put our minds to it instead of checking out with the convenient “I’m not techy excuse”.

I took a huge leap (for me- I am one of the people who had to sign up for Twitter and Google+ because of Alec’s class) and I am using Google Classroom for all of my classes this year. Not only is it a step in the environmentally-friendly direction by greatly reducing our use of paper, but it also forces the students to navigate the online world and learn to use Google Docs/Drive- something a surprisingly small number of them know how to do. I do not know it all yet, and I don’t pretend to, but together we are learning and problem solving along the way.

I learned a lot in the 4 months I took EC&I 831 last fall. I learned even more in the last 8 months as I have started to teach using these tools and skills (I was on maternity leave at the time I took the course).  I think we need to stop using “I’m not techy” as an excuse to avoid doing something and start challenging ourselves to become active in the online world. I now use Twitter routinely and am connecting with educators online. I feel I am heading in the right direction to build my online presence and use technology to benefit my teaching.

If you haven’t made this jump yet, it’s ok- it takes time, but it is well worth your effort once you start.

~Brittany

Where in the World is Financial Education?

Over the last few weeks I have spent most of my time looking at published articles about financial literacy pedagogy.  Today I am going to summarize some of my findings about what is being done for finance education in different parts of the world as well as offer some thoughts on the effectiveness of some of the different models.

As of 2014 financial literacy education is mandatory for all student in the U.K. school system. In the U.K. it will be integrated into the existing Math courses as well as included in a new Citizenship course.  A quote from the Business Time article about U.K. mandating financial education has made me think about all of the inconclusive research I have been reading: “There is a lot of conflicting data as to what kind of lessons actually work. We have built a library of research papers topping 1,400 globally and are essentially studying our way to inertia”.  I feel like this has put into words a lot of what I have been feeling over the last few weeks.  Reading studies that suggests financial literacy education may not accomplish what we hope it will had made me think twice about whether it was a good idea or not; but all along my gut reaction is still that there is such a need for this education that we need to be teaching it even if the research is inconclusive about the results.  I have also been feeling like the research may not be capturing the whole picture and that providing the education is still beneficial, even if what the research is looking at isn’t providing improved results.   I think we need to take action and work to increase the effectiveness of financial education as time goes on rather than sit back and wait for the perfect education model to exist before we, here in SK, jump on board.

One of the difficult things about measuring the effectiveness of financial literacy education is that just because we increase knowledge doesn’t mean that will carry over into practice for students. I think we know this from looking at healthy eating, environmental stewardship, recommended physical activity, and other lifestyle/behaviour-based lessons. Knowing that we should be eating healthier, treating the environment better, and increasing our physical activity is a large jump from actually doing these things in our day to day lives. Even when we know exactly how to do them, actually doing them day-to-day is a different thing. I see financial literacy as being a  behaviour-based area of study. I think that there is value to teaching financial literacy, even if we don’t see the overwhelming results proving that we have a completely financially literate society- whatever that means. I think that we should try to arm our students with whatever knowledge, skills, and tools we can so that when they want to work towards healthy finances in their lives they have a better sense of how to do it and where to look for help and resources they need.

I also think there there is benefit to give students knowledge, even if they don’t use the information immediately. We routinely teach students about nutrition and reference Canada’s Food Guide even though nobody expects that the average high school or university student will be following it religiously. Teaching nutritional information at a young age gives students the tools the need to make healthier eating decisions when they decide it is appropriate for themselves. I think that teaching financial literacy is a similar concept: give students the knowledge and hope that at some point they will turn this knowledge in to informed behaviours.

Some of the research also suggested that financial behaviours are learned at home and not taught in the classroom- but I think that this can be changed as well. We all likely learned most of what we know about financial decisions from the modeling around us- but we learn from all of the things we are exposed to- and adding lessons on financial literacy into the curriculum will increase the tools an individual has for decision making in the future.

This Business Time article on personal finance education in the U.K. also identified Australia and Singapore as leaders in financial education and recognized that Canada and New Zealand seem to be following in the same direction. Apparently by Canada they mean Ontario and BC as I haven’t found a lot of other Canadian provinces/territories with financial education mandates yet.  For Saskatchewan I found an inactive link on the ministry site that says the “Ministry of Education supports teaching financial literacy skills in education” (http://www.publications.gov.sk.ca/details.cfm?p=65669)  The summary that accompanies this inactive link states that the finance minister visited an entrepreneurship classes in Moose Jaw to learn about their business plans and cited this as “just one example of financial literacy education in Saskatchewan”.  I would say the ministry is falling short of “supporting” financial literacy.

When I looked at what is being done in BC I found a 2010 document published by the BCBEA (British Columbia Business Education Association) outlining what needs to be done to improve financial literacy education in B.C..  I was originally unable to find any information on what had been done with this document, but now I have discovered that BC has integrated financial literacy education in to their new Math curricula.  I will look further in to this in the future as the Math curriculum is where I originally pictured financial literacy as a good fit, but I am now feeling unsure about whether Math teachers are best suited to teach it or not.  I still see concerns with it being in all classes in all grades because I feel all teachers are definitely not equipped to teach the skills, but I do like the idea that these conversations need to be happening throughout our schooling and repeated.

In Alberta it seems that financial literacy topics are taught under the Wellness umbrella as part of either Life Skills or Career and Life Management.  In talking with a friend of mine that taught Life Skills in Alberta she revealed that it is a ‘joke course’ for kids and identified that it was painful to try to educate Grade 9 students on a topic they weren’t interested in at all. I think that program status is so important for financial literacy education to be a success. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think that personal finance content needs to be taught in a course equivalent to a senior level Math.  The content has the same difficulty and needs the ‘core content’ status to be as effective as possible and it needs to be taught by properly trained teachers. I also think that adding the content to every class is more content for already busy teachers with no financial management training (such as my friend) to teach.  I don’t think that we can be surprised when research is showing we aren’t getting the desired results.

While I can see the benefit of having personal finance education in all subjects in all grades, I also have some concerns with that form of implementation.  Teachers in today’s classrooms are already over-burdened with meeting the increasing demands placed upon them.  I worry that if the teaching of financial literacy falls on the shoulders of all teachers it will become nobody’s responsibility and will be taught superficially for the most part.  Another concern with all teachers covering financial literacy concepts is that we won’t have properly trained teachers teaching a difficult subject: one that many teachers do not fully understand themselves.  With broad-based mandates, such as the one implemented in Ontario, it is also difficult to ensure all students are receiving lessons on a variety of concepts in different grade levels and impossible to make sure all intended topics are covered at some point in their schooling.  I think that a broad-based mandate, if used, needs to be paired with a specific personal financial management course that follows in the upper years or there needs to be a division of personal finance topics to be covered at different grade levels. I started this course thinking that personal finance/financial literacy was largely a Math topic that could be integrated into the Math curricula, but I have shifted my opinion to think that personal finance does need to be a stand-alone course as many of the concepts needed aren’t Math related.

What I think needs to happen is for schools to offer education that works to encompass families and communities in personal finance education. If we start a financial literacy movement in the schools there is no reason we can’t make literature and resources available for families as well and aim to start that conversation at home.  It isn’t something that would happen from Day 1 of implementation, but the conversation needs to start somewhere as it is being left to parents and many parents are not having ‘the money talk’.

In May CBC published an article about a Saskatoon teacher, Albert Couture, teaching financial literacy lessons in his Grade 6 & 7 classes.  Despite the fact that the content is not mandatory here in Saskatchewan, he has managed to fit it in to the curriculum.  He uses a program called The Real Game that I am interested in checking out (I looked it up, but it is subscription-based and I was unable to play a trial round. I will email asking for a trial account).  The Real Game “pays” students monthly salaries and they use the funds to create their dream life.  Quotes in the article from Couture’s students suggested a steep learning curve for these students as they discovered how far a monthly income needs to stretch to cover expenses: “I was planning on getting all these nice cars, then it kind of hit me that I could only get a bike” said one of the students.  It is this kind of reality-based games that seem to be working for financial education rather than simply learning personal finance literacy definitions and concepts.  “Jumpstart surveys (Mandell, 2006) have shown consistently that high school students who play a stock market game are significantly more financially literate than those who do not.  This implies that classes which are interactive, relevant, and fun may be more effective than those that are purely didactic” (Mandell & Klein, 2009).  I think that too often teachers that don’t understand the concepts of personal finance education well teach it superficially and offer regurgitation-based concepts rather than using higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.  I think that some of these reality-based games push students beyond the regurgitation of concepts and force them to apply what they know in a ‘real-life’ situation.

There were a few other things that I learned from the CBC article.  The first was that I should stay away from the comments section of an online article: ignorance is shared freely!!  That being said, there were a lot of comments that showed support of the need for personal finance education in the school system.  The other was that a recent BMO survey showed that parents would rather talk to their children about sex than about family finances.  I found this interesting because these are the people we are trusting to teach our future generations about finances.  Not only are studies showing that the general public is not equipped with the knowledge needed to teach personal finance skills; but they also don’t want to do it. There is also a document called “The Birds and the Bills: having the money talk with your kids” shared on GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca (sponsored by the Ontario Securities Commission- Investor Education) suggesting that it is a difficult conversation to have with your kids and a guide is needed.  I think this is part of the battle- it should be a constant education, not ‘a talk’.

This lack of personal finance knowledge in the public means that the average teacher is unlikely to have the knowledge needed, or the teaching skills, to teach these concepts well. To me this highlights the need for government mandated financial literacy education as well as extensive teacher training programs to ensure teachers are properly qualified to be teaching the topics.

~

“The need for financially well-adjusted individuals is of great significance, as financial adversity does not only lead to financial hardship but also to emotional and psychological issues such as depression, distress and relationship problems”. –Liezel Alsemgeest, Behavioural Finance lecturer, University of the Free State, South Africa

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Arguments for and against financial literacy education

I ended last week with 3 fairly statistics-heavy articles (Bernheim et al., Tennyson & Nguyen, and Peng et al.).  It was nice to have a bit of a mental break after tackling these articles (if you can call travelling with a 1 & 3 year old a break!!).  I decided to jump back in with a shorter article that contained fewer numbers (and, yes, I am shocked by this as I love Math and am usually a numbers person).

I looked at Arguments for and against financial literacy education: where to go from here? By Liezel Alsemgeest.  While there were a lot of good discussion pieces brought up in the article, I was left a bit disappointed by the for and against arguments.  I was hoping for the article to be a bit more of a comprehensive list than what I got (but I guess that is fitting when I opted for an “easy read”).  In summary the article establishes the for argument by emphasizing the need for improved financial behaviour to combat “…the credit crisis, consumer over-indebtedness, and bankruptcy…”.  The against argument brought up the concern for a “one-size-fits-all” education for a subject that every individual will manage in their own way and concerns over the effectiveness of personal finance education. Another point brought up in the against financial literacy education argument is that education can create a false confidence that leads consumers to think they know more about finances that they actually do, causing them to get themselves further in debt.

One of the things I think the article did well was present a more realistic expectation about what can be expected from providing financial literacy education.  She recognizes that a person’s financial decisions are more complex than simply cognitively understanding the finances: “The first and most important starting point would be to settle on the notion that blaming financial illiteracy as the sole culprit of the global financial credit crisis is naïve”.  The article also recognizes that family influences and economic socialization may outweigh the efforts put in by educational institutions to teach financial literacy.

At this point I am feeling that there is an undeniable need to change the economic socializations and the way money is viewed by our culture.  It is a view that makes me feel like I am at the bottom of a valley when I need to climb a mountain to accomplish something as complex as financial literacy and teaching future members of Saskatchewan society to live debt-free. We have become such a ‘buy-now, pay-later’ society that we are not used to delaying gratification for anything anymore.  Having phones with instant access to an endless amount of information and services isn’t helping with this shift in lifestyle and I think this is a big part of why Canadians (as well as others throughout the world) are finding themselves in a financial crisis. I think this is also important to remember when we look at the results of studies gauging whether personal finance education works- there will be a lag in effectiveness.  Changing spending habits won’t happen immediately- as was shown in the Bernheim et al. article- there was about a 10 year lag period before results were noticed.  This makes we feel that time is important and we need to start now to benefit our Saskatchewan youth and work to change the mentality around spending.

This article brought up an interesting point about the root of the debt problem.  She suggests that a lack of financial literacy may not be the main part of the problem, but instead an access to too much debt.  Is it possible that we are facing a lending problem rather than an education problem? “The severity of indebtedness seems to increase as access to credit increases”.  I think this is a valid argument that needs to be explored- and perhaps taught to individuals as part of a personal finance course.

A term I encountered in this article that I was not previously familiar with is ‘predatory lending’. I think it is a fitting term that the general public would benefit from using so that access to money isn’t always seen as a good thing and people will learn to protect themselves from overspending.

“The basic consumer financial equation comprises money that an individual generates throughout his/her lifetime, as well as spending either more or less, which would result in either debt or savings.”  This quote from the article made me laugh at just how simple of a concept spending is and just how complicated we have made it in our society.  We don’t necessarily have a money issue in our society, but instead a psychological and social issue.

This article definitely reminded me to proceed with caution and not expect mandated personal finance education to be a simple solution to a complex problem.  I do not, however, think that this means that pursuing personal finance education in Saskatchewan is not a worthwhile venture, I just think it is important to keep realistic expectations about the outcomes and not immediately expect a debt-free society.  Social norms, such as spending, take time and continued effort to change.

~

B

“The gulf between the knowledge, comprehension and skills of most American adults and those needed in today’s market cannot be bridged by financial literacy education.” –Lauren Willis, Associate professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

 

 

Positive Research Results- Bernheim et al.

My last entry looked at the ‘negative and no correlation’ research (Tennysen & Nguyen article and Peng, Bartholomae, Fox, & Cravener article).  I put emphasis on these terms as I found when I read the articles that this wasn’t completely the case.  Both had some positive outcomes for finance education, but not all positive results.  Today I am taking time to explore an article that has been referenced over and over in the other readings I have done so far: Education and saving: The long-term effects of high school financial curriculum mandates- by Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki.  Loibl & Fisher referred to this work as a “groundbreaking study (that) reported positive effects on savings behaviour and asset building among young adults receiving financial literacy education in high school”.

The research they did was a survey given in the Fall of 1995 looking at whether state curriculum mandates for personal finance education had an effect on savings and asset building. A total of 2000 surveys were administered by telephone gathering information on household economics and demographics, household earnings, total income, self-reported rates of savings, assets and liabilities, pension coverage, employment status, and information on childhood influences of potential relevance to future financial decisions.

The study found a positive correlation between states with finance education mandates and higher levels of savings and net worth.  One of the things I found most interesting about the study was that the positive results took a few years after the implementation of the mandate to show and as time went on the results improved. “We found that we obtained stronger results in the saving rate regressions when we truncated ‘years since mandate’ at 10 years. This suggests that mandates may achieve their full effect within a 10-year time frame”.

The data in this study fits in to what I believe to be true- mandated personal finance education will have an effect on savings and net worth later in a student’s life.  I wasn’t surprised to learn that they were only able to calculate the net worth of 55% of the respondents because the others were unable to provide enough information. I don’t think a lot of adults I know would know their own finances enough to predict their own net worth either- just another reason more education at an earlier age is needed.

~

“Economics education is about much more than money; it provides students with a framework for making good decisions that will help them and the country.” -Alan B. Krueger, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University

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Looking at the ‘no or negative correlation’ studies

The articles I chose to look at today were ones mentioned in the Loibl & Fisher article I discussed yesterday.  I chose to look at these two because they were on the list of articles that found either no or negative correlations between high school financial education and financial behaviours.

• State Curriculum Mandates and Student Knowledge of Personal Finance- Tennyson & Nguyen
• The Impact of Personal Finance Education Delivered in High School and College Courses- Peng, Bartholomae, Fox, & Cravener

I went in to these two readings expecting to discover the worst about how financial education in high school does not work- but I am not feeling that way.  Liobl & Fisher referred to the Tennyson & Nguyen article as showing no correlation for finance education, but the article suggested that there was an improvement for test scores for individuals required to take a personal finance course in high school but not for states that simply had broadly defined curriculum mandates.  I entered this course thinking the stand-alone personal finance course was the best option, and I am becoming convinced that way once again.  The Peng, Bartholomae, Fox, & Cravener found no improvement for students that took a high school course, but they did find improvement for students that took a course in college. They suggested that this could be due to the timing of offering the education at a time when students were taking on higher levels of personal financial responsibility.

One of the things that stood out to me from the Tennyson & Nguyen study was how low the test scores were overall- even for students who had taken a Personal Finance course and planned to attend four-year college or university programs.  Average quiz scores were still under 60%.  I think this is a testament to the fact that better financial literacy education is desperately needed.  I do not think they are easy concepts to teach, but I think that the difficulty of the material increases the need for the development of good education for these concepts.  I believe that the alternative is a society that doesn’t have a lack of money, but a society that will never be debt-free due to a lack of money management skills.

It also stood out to me that the average difference in test scores, while considered significantly different, was less than 5% on the mean score.  While a few of these articles are challenging my statistics knowledge- this stands out to me as being a modest increase in test performance after investing resources to teach a full course on Personal Finance to all students.

Tennyson & Nguyen also considered race, future educational plans, and parent’s education when looking at the test scores and there were no surprises that being a Caucasian student from a home with educated parents and plans to attend a four-year college or university program scored the best.  What did surprise me a bit was that there weren’t any measurable differences in gender performance.

The Peng, Bartholomae, Fox, and Cravener research found that a college personal finance class was more beneficial for students than a high school course.  This, also, isn’t surprising as this course would come at a time when students are making some of their own financial decisions for the first time and the learning is more meaningful because they are learning information needed immediately. This is something that has continued to concern me: Is high school too early for students to learn these financial skills as they won’t be likely to need them at the time? This is a concern I hope to address after further research, but the alternative of offering personal finance courses in college or university means that you are missing a large number of students that will never make it to these places- likely the students that need the skills the most.

As mentioned in my previous entry, I think these articles brought to light concerns with the implementation of broadly outlined mandates and highlights a need for more than just a public-pleasing mandate, but instead a full mandatory personal finance course offered by well trained teachers.  I acknowledge that this is not an easy task, but I personally feel it is both a valuable investment and one that is long overdue.  I think that a high school level personal finance course would need to try to create experiential learning opportunities for students and find ways to make the learning meaningful for students in order for it to be successful.

One of the questions I am left thinking about at this point is whether or not increasing student knowledge will actually improve consumer behaviours. Next I intend to look at the Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki study as it has been referenced several times in the readings I have done and I am hoping it can address this question.

~

“Recent economic challenges have highlighted the importance of teaching our kids to understand personal finance. The day-to-day relevance of economic concepts and financial responsibility will only continue to increase as the world is rapidly transformed by science and technology. Providing students with the practical tools they need to apply that knowledge will help them succeed financially by creating businesses, driving innovation, and achieving personal dreams. Working together, we can infuse our classrooms with the necessary foundational capabilities and make financial education a centerpiece of our public and private agenda.”

–Richard D. Fairbank, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, Capital One Financial Corporation

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Blog Entry #9 More financial literacy education fails

Research is stacking up against financial literacy education.  Most recently I read Mandell & Klein’s study: The Impact of Financial Literacy Education on Subsequent Financial Behaviour.  While they used a small sample size (79 students), they were able to use students that had similar educational experiences and they were able to know, for certain, which students had taken a Personal Finance course from school records rather than just asking participants to remember their education on the survey.  These were also students from a school with a highly regarded Personal Financial Management class, not just a school where it was mandated to have a course offered.  The findings of the survey showed that students who took the course were no more financially literate than those who had not.  The students that took the course were also no more likely to identify as savings-oriented and did not seem to have better financial behaviours than those who did not take the course.

It boggles my mind to think that offering a full course in financial management to students does not have an effect on their financial behaviour or knowledge within 1-4 years time.  I feel like there is such an established need for this education, but why is it not working when it is being offered? One of the reasons that I have thought about is that students are learning information that is not relevant to them at the time.  It would be like me learning about retirement options now- not one of my highest priorities, so the information is less likely to stick in my mind.  Most students in high school are not financially independent and thus are not a captive audience for the much-needed financial management knowledge.  I also think that there is not a lot of importance placed on personal finance and financial literacy in schools, and as a result we have untrained teachers taking on the classes, not teaching from an area of passion. I also don’t think students place a high value on the content of the class, making their learning less influential on the own lives.

I especially can’t get my mind around the Jump$tart surveys and their results showing students with no course in personal financial management out-performing the students who have taken a course.  Students are actually doing worse on the assessment after taking the class? I am left wondering what it is about the content of a personal finance class that could produce results such as these.  Surely students don’t perform worse after taking Math, Science and English classes- otherwise there would be a lot of teachers searching for jobs.  Is there something unique about the content of personal financial management? Are the concepts too difficult for a high school senior? I personally wouldn’t think so- especially for the average/higher achieving students. While I can see the student disinterest factor having an effect, I wouldn’t have guessed it would have that much of an effect.  You should still have your students that are going to learn the content required of them, no matter what that content is.  These students should be improving the test scores on the Jump$tart surveys, and that is not the case. Are there too many factors affecting the ever-changing field of personal finance? Again, I wouldn’t have thought this would be the case for most high school students if they were able to be taught in a classroom with a well-educated, effective teacher.

I started studying financial literacy education because I felt like there was a need to teach it here in Saskatchewan to help the next generation avoid the financial mismanagement problems my generation is experiencing.  What I am finding, however, is that the results are inconclusive about whether or not there is ANY improvement on financial behaviours from these educational efforts.  As a teacher I have been taught to think (and teach others to think) that knowledge is power and that by learning about things we can change the way we live accordingly.  It is hard for me to accept that educating students in financial literacy won’t create adults with better financial management skills. I find myself questioning: what are some alternate education options to change the financial literacy of our province? When should financial literacy skills be taught? Early in my blog entries I looked at what Ontario is doing: mandated finance education in every subject Grades 4-12.  Will this be more effective than a single Senior year course? Do we need the finance education to be continuously repeated year after year to create the knowledge base and attitudes needed for the Personal Finance course that should be taught in senior year? Or, is personal finance something people have to learn about the hard way through personal experience or modelling in a family environment? I am struggling with a lot of these difficult questions as I feel there is more and more research showing that financial education mandates are not the simple solution I came into this course expecting would change the financial literacy of our SK students. I have not abandoned the idea of a need to teach these skills, I am just feeling like I need to do more research to find out how we can teach these skills effectively, rather than just teach them to satisfy public demand.

The Mandell & Klein article referred to different studies that paint a more positive picture for financial literacy.  Hilgert, Hogarth, and Beverly (2003) found that financial knowledge is related to financial behaviour.  Elliehausen, Lundquist, and Staten (2003) found that credit counselling improved borrowing behaviour and creditworthiness.  Hirad and Zorn (2001) found that pre-purchase counselling programs completed by home buyers decreased delinquency rates.  To me this shows that financial literacy education is able to influence financial behaviours, but may suggest that the timing of the learning is high in importance for the learning.

One of the big drawbacks of the Mandell & Klein article (that they recognise and discuss in the Summary section) is the fact that it only follows high school students for the first 5 years after graduation (ages 18-23).  It is likely that many of the survey participants do not fully manage their own finances yet and have not experienced many of the personal financial management behaviours that will come.  I am interested in knowing if the skills and attitudes learned in high school finance courses affect individuals after this time as they navigate through many of their first big financial decisions. I wish the study had repeated itself 5 years later to see if the same results presented.

 

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“I feel very strongly that America will never truly get public spending under control unless we as Americans culturally change the way our personal finances are managed.” –Lynn Fitch, Mississippi State Treasurer

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What the people want

What the people want.

I have started out today’s reading with a very interesting article: Academic Discipline and Personal Finance Instruction in High School by Cazilia Loibl and Patti Fisher.

“Public opinion has embraced the idea that personal finance instruction in high school is key to alleviating consumer indebtedness, financial delinquency, and bankruptcy…The academic literature, however, is inconclusive regarding the effects of high school financial education on financial decisions and behaviours” (Bernanke 2011; Bernard 2010 as per Loibl & Fisher 2013).

I am feeling as though this is a good time to be exploring the effectiveness of finance education as the implementation of mandatory personal finance and economics education in both the U.S. and Ontario is sure to produce interest and new research. I got the impression when I met with my cooperating professor that there may be some conflicting research on whether or not personal finance education actually has the desired outcome of reducing debt, bankruptcy rates, and leads to overall better financial decision making. This is the first article I am exploring that is confirming that.

The article suggests that there is a difference between the goals of the public mandate and how the instruction is actually being implemented.  Often the implementation is unfunded, not a part of the core curriculum, and vague as to which curriculum or academic department it fits under.  There is a large variety of ways in which finance education is being offered, which may explain some of the discrepancies in the research on its effectiveness. As a practicing teacher I know that if a mandate is put on everyone’s shoulders, no one will feel the need to be accountable for it. The article points out that a “groundbreaking study by Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki (2001) reported positive effects on savings behaviour and asset building among young adults receiving financial literacy education in high school” but that “other studies found no (Cole & Shastry, 2010; Mandekk, 2005; Tennyson & Nguyen, 2001) or negative relationships between high school financial education and financial behaviours (Peng, 2008; Peng, Bartholomae, Fox, & Cravener, 2007)”.

The article goes on to talk about 5 dimensions describing academic disciplines’ approaches to teaching high school subjects: definition, scope, status, sequence and dynamic.  Subject definition refers to how well defined a subject is in terms of what is taught in the course.  Personal finance is a subject with a broad definition and great variation of content- often dependent on the academic department responsible for teaching the content. Scope refers to the number of disciplinary areas associated with a course; for personal finance this can include economics, marketing, psychology, social studies, family studies and more.  The third dimension, Status, refers to how valued a course is by the school community, which can influence funding and whether content is included in standardized testing and core curriculum. The fourth dimension is sequentiality.  Personal finance is a course with low sequentiality, meaning that there aren’t a lot of the topics that need to be taught in a certain order.  The fifth and final dimension is subject dynamic- or how much a subject changes, creating a continuous need to stay updated. Being a course based on modern society and behaviours, personal finance topics are highly dynamic. I think that a wide range in scope and subject definition combined with low status in schools makes financial literacy content difficult to deal with from an administration perspective.

The article goes on to look at differences in personal finance education dependent on the subject area it is taught under: business education, family and consumer sciences, or social studies/economics. Summaries of the educators, their experience, and how they offer their courses is found in the table (taken from the article) below.

Some of the challenges reported by teachers that completed the survey included not enough resources, a lack of funding, dealing with administration, student interest, and competing with other electives.  I found the research interesting as it identified gender and education differences between the teachers in the different academic disciplines and these can be connected to the content offered within the course differences.  “Telling is the finding that the mostly female, older, lower educated family and consumer sciences teachers were more hesitant to teach investing content that other personal finance content” (Loibl & Fisher, 2013).

When I started thinking about the need for personal finance education in secondary schools I had in my mind that it would either fit as a stand-alone class or as part of the Math curriculum.  I have learned that Math doesn’t ever seem to be the home for these skills.  I am feeling a bit like the personal finance topics may lose their status if they are tucked into other courses and taught by non-finance trained teachers.  I think this is an important point addressed in the article- that the “gap between the goal of the mandate and its implementation may undermine the anticipated outcome” (Loibl & Fisher, 2013).

Do I think that efforts to teach finance skills in secondary schools need to be abandoned due to research suggesting it is not effective? No.  I think it is a sign that we need to look at HOW it is being offered and make the necessary changes to give the content the important status it deserves.

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“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” –Benjamin Franklin

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Survey of the States

 

It turns out Ontario isn’t the only place implementing finance education. Early in my searches I discovered that the United States has also been moving towards including economic and financial education for students over the last 15 years.  I am extremely grateful to the Council for Economic Education (CEE) for publishing a summary of the economic and personal finance education offered in American schools called Survey of States.  I feel like I hit the jackpot and saved myself many hours of work that I can use to expand my searches to other countries.

While the Survey of the States (SOTS) is only 8 pages- it is PACKED with relevant information.  I will try my best to highlight the main parts and will include other stats from the document in future blog entries as needed. I looked over a few versions of the survey, but I will focus this entry on the most recent publication (2014).  It is evident from looking at the document that there has been progress over the last 15 years (since the survey was first conducted) in economic and personal finance education.  The SOTS also acknowledges that this progress has slowed in pace since the mid 2000’s.

I thought it was great to see that since 2009 all 50 states now require economics topics to be included in their standards.  I was also impressed to see that 22 states require a high school course be taken in Economics and 17 states require a high school course be taken in Personal Finance. I noticed that many of these states are the same and I wonder if they have to have 2 separate courses to be a yes for both lists, or if states can offer one course covering both Economics and Personal Finance. The SOTS also tells us that in 2009 58% of high school graduates had taken a course in Economics.  I am interested to know what Saskatchewan statistics are like for students taking Personal Finance.  With only 1 locally developed curriculum offered at only one high school in Regina (that I know of) I know that the number of students graduating with a Personal Finance course would be limited.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recommends that states mandate students complete a stand-alone course in personal finance in addition to including personal finance in the curriculum of other courses.  They do say that schools can make a Personal Finance course optional as an incremental step, but that this would still leave many students graduating without important financial skills.  I feel like this would be the best plan as well.

The SOTS report also provides 5 essential strategies for advancing financial education (published by the CFPB):

1. Introduce financial concepts early and continue to build on them through K-12 years. It is encouraged to make a stand-alone financial education course a graduation requirement for high school students.

2. Include personal finance questions on standardized tests.

3. Provide K-12 students opportunities to practice money management through hands-on learning opportunities.

4. Provide opportunities for teachers to complete financial education training.

5. Encourage parents to discuss money management topics at home and provide them with the tools they need.

Other interesting tidbits from the SOTS (2014):

– A 2012 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) found that 36% of respondents aged 18-34 had student loan debt and a startling 55% of this group were concerned they may be unable to pay this debt.

– NFCS’s 2012 survey also told that only 1/3 of respondents had an emergency savings, 31% had unpaid medical bills, and almost half had a balance on their credit card.

– In Mississippi 41% of credit card holders are making only minimum payments and nationally this is not much better.

The SOTS shows that efforts to implement mandatory finance education appear to be most effective when they are state required and the implementation is supported by outside the school organizations that work to assist with teacher training and resource development. For example, in 2009 the Arkansas Department of Education made an Economics course mandatory for Graduation.  In one year Arkansas went from 2 school districts to over 250 schools districts with this requirement for an Economics course.  Economics Arkansas helped to ease the transition by offering activities-based lessons for teachers to use as well as teacher workshops.

Reading through the Survey of the States reports has made me realize just how large the movement is to teach personal finance skills and economics in schools.  Seeing the information from both Ontario and the U.S. has made me hopeful that there might be a future for finance education in SK, but also frustrated that we aren’t currently teaching anything. I also like their 5 essential strategies because they address both teacher training and need to get parents involved.

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“Just as it was not possible to live in an industrialized society without print literacy- the ability to read and write- so is it not possible to live in today’s world without being financially literate. To fully participate in society today, financial literacy is critical.” -Annamaria Lusardi, Denit Trust Professor of Economics and Accountancy at the George Washington University School of Business, and Director of the Financial Literacy Center

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Ontario Today

In my last blog post A Look at Ontario I looked at the plan for implementing personal finance education in Ontario schools.  I followed this up by looking at the Ontario Ministry of education website to see what had actually been done in the last few years in the area.  I was please to find a whole section on financial literacy in Ontario schools.  It seems the implementation closely followed the 2009 plans where content is spread into existing classes.  In fact, the Ontario Ministry of Education published resource guide indicates that “The Ministry of Education is working to embed financial literacy expectations and opportunities in all subjects in Grades 4 to 8 and all disciplines in Grades 9 to 12 in the Ontario curriculum”.  Emphasis on ALL subject areas.

I originally thought that a separate course to teach financial literacy (personal finance) would be a better plan, but Ontario is convincing me that their model working it in to all courses could be effective as well.  Their video for parents shows students of various ages learning the content in a meaningful way in a variety of classes.  The supporting resource document  also offers teachers of all subjects specific examples of how financial skills can be taught in their subject areas. Spending time on the Ontario site has left me feeling like Saskatchewan is behind the times.

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“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” -B.F. Skinner, Behavioural Psychologist

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